More Americans think Muslims face discrimination than any other group; Jews see sharp rise

(CNN)More than eight in 10 Americans say Muslims face at least some discrimination in American society, outpacing other major groups, according to a Pew Research Center poll out Monday.

The research comes after President Donald Trump tweeted about Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, last week. The tweet included a video of a speech Omar gave last month discussing her views that Muslims are treated as second-class citizens. Footage from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center was spliced in with clips of the speech. Trump wrote, “We will never forget!” as a caption.

The tweet was seen by many as an attack on the Muslim community. Omar said she has received more death threats after that tweet. The poll was conducted before the tweet.

Three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents now say that there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims, up from 56% in 2013 and Republicans and Republican-leaning independents remained about the same over that time, from 31% in 2013 to 34% now.

Overall, Americans’ perceptions of how much discrimination different groups face held roughly steady compared to 2016. However, there was one exception, as the poll showed a sharp increase in the share of people who say Jews experience discrimination.

In 2019, 24% of Americans said that there’s a lot of discrimination against Jews in our society, up 11 percentage points from 2016 (and up 20 points in people who said there’s a lot or some discrimination). Democrats and Republicans all saw an increase of 11 to 13 percentage points in those who said Jews experienced a lot of discrimination over the last three years.

There was also an increase in the share who report discrimination against women in the past few years, up from 60% who said there was a lot or some discrimination against women to 69% now.

Republicans, for the most part, did not vary widely from the 2016 poll when they were asked if blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, gays and lesbians, women and whites faced a lot of discrimination. However, the percentage of Democrats who said there’s a lot of discrimination against most of the tested groups increased significantly and the number of independents who said the same increased to a slightly lesser degree.

More Republicans said whites and evangelical Christians are subject to discrimination than did Democrats. The percentage of people who said evangelical Christians face a lot of discrimination increased from 2016 to 2019, while the percentage of people who said the same about whites decreased slightly.

The respondent’s race was a big predictor of how much they thought discrimination was occurring — with 73% of blacks saying that there is a lot of discrimination against blacks in American society and 63% of Hispanics who said the same about Hispanics.

But among white people, partisanship divided how respondents view discrimination against racial and ethnic groups.

Two-thirds of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said there is a lot of discrimination against blacks compared to only 16% of white Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. More than two in 10 white Republicans and Republican-leaners said whites experience a lot of discrimination in our society compared to 4% of white Democrats and Democratic-leaners.

The Pew Research Center poll was conducted March 20 through March 25 among a random national sample of 1,503 adults reached on landlines or cellphones by a live interviewer. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points. It is larger for subgroups.